Harry Potter and the Unconquerable Soul
by Rambaud
Summary: Dumbledore's plan was a little more protective of Harry... Maybe a little too much: Harry is now 23 and still hasn't received his acceptance letter to Hogwarts. Today he will, and so will his most regular customer: Dr. Granger, famed physicist. How did they grow up during these twelve years? What magical Britain will they find?
1. Prologue

Two dark silhouettes undulated in the starry night sky, as big and as dark as the vault of heaven itself. They spoke a language he didn't understand while lights flickered off under him. He was descending, slowly. And suddenly he understood their speech, but it seemed slurred. Too deep; as if it had been slowed down... Some of it was missing.

"Don't you think you're ––––– with the untraceability? It's a bit much..."

"Better safe than –––... If he's late for school, it can be managed. But if they find him..." He (He was pretty sure that was a he) trailed off. "We'll have to –––– everyone that he's dead; this place needs to be ––– forgotten."

Lights flickered, blue strands of silky stardust caressed his small body. Their waltzing circles filled the air and space, forming moving bridges between the stars. Under him, in the street, a car passed them by. It had to slow down because of the sudden darkness, lit its headlight, and sped away with a satisfying murmur.

"But his education... If he doesn't have an education-"

"He'll be protected. I'm sure he can wait a little without losing his –––. By then we'll have made –––– safe for his return, and he'll have been forgotten... It won't be easy, but I..." hesitation didn't become this eternal voice. "I think it's for the best."

The dancing lights brought him to sleep.


	2. Chapter 1

Harry opened his eyes; they were already accustomed to the 4am darkness. He sat up, looking past the crackled walls of his shoddy apartment, rubbed the sleep away from his face, and assumed a meditating pose: legs crossed, elbows rested on his knees, hands linked over his shins... relaxed shoulders... straight back... A few breathing exercises later, the _tension_ accumulated during the night had already receded a bit.

It wasn't a muscular stress... More like an existential tension, something repressed that wanted out. He had his rituals to cope during the day, but when he slept... He knew the dreams were part of the problem, but for all his reading on the subject, he still hadn't mastered lucid dreaming, self-hypnosis, or any other way to take control over his restless nights...

The tension was too much; his meditation wouldn't work. He'd have to exhaust it first. He hastily put on some comfortable linen clothes, prepared his... hum... herbal tea – his stash was running low by the way – put it in a thermos, and climbed the short flight of stairs leading to the roof of his apartment building. It was technically forbidden, but people who lived there had more important problems – such as the fact that they lived there.

He felt the cool morning wind seep through the light material of his shirt, and forced his body to relax until it stopped shivering. He extended his sense of self to his surroundings until the air seemed part of him. There was a sphere; It was centred on him... It was his space. He imposed his control over it until he felt its quiet down. The early bird calls and car alarms disappeared in the distance, never to be heard again. He started moving slowly, then faster reproducing some kind of _kata_ , never opening his eyes.

It wasn't exactly _karate_ , or _kung fu_ , or anything precise. It was an exercise and meditation routine he had been doing everyday since he was around 12; a lot of martial arts had been incorporated at some point or other. He knew it wasn't _actual_ martial arts: he never had had the money for a class; but he had managed with reading, watching movies, documentaries about _xiaolin_ monks, and observation during free trial classes... In the end, he could manage some pretty moves, but they probably wouldn't be of any use in an actual fight.

He started including the _tension_ in his dance projecting it, grabbing it, unfolding it, extending it in the air around him and the ground under his feet. As he did so, he pictured the ground shifting under his feet. Pillars rising at odd angles, shooting up from under and around him with the muffled sound of something heavy being dragged against concrete. In his mind's eye, he jumped from one column to the next; when he accompanied a sweeping motion a certain way, it would cut a pillar in two and let it crash. Another way, and it would uncoil into a wall, or form a bridge to another stone column, or drag itself on the ground with a grating sound. Kick the ground a certain way, one would lift off and hover above the ground; another way, it would explode into small pieces. He ran up the side of one of the concrete cylinders, kicked off of it into a backwards dive, and landed heavily on both feet, his open palms under his belly, pushing the tension downwards and out: the whole structure he saw around him – a forest of stone pillars – shattered at once into levitating rubble.

As he exhaled, he relinquished a part of his control over the imaginary rocks' movements, giving them a measure of will of their own. What his mind's eye saw began to elude his own will, as though his own imagination formed images without his consent. A rock accelerated towards him from behind; he dodged it. Then another. Then another. Then two at the same time. The tempo got faster and faster until he fell into a state of flow, where his acrobatics could just barely keep up with his mind. He kept it up for a while, before opting for a more challenging workout. He upped the tempo again, this time allowing himself to deflect the imaginary rubble, using his arms to form shields around hims, striking at them to destroy them as he twirled and flew around them. Eventually, it got fast enough that some would get around his defences. They'd stop by themselves, of course, less than an inch shy of pummelling into his body. He would tsk under his breath, mentally rewind the rock's motion, and start over until he found a way to destroy it. When all of it was turned to dust, he spread his arms, drew in a sharp breath... then let it go, his arms and legs folding again into a meditation stance, letting the dust vanish.

He kept meditating for a while, conjuring his mental palace and organizing the events of the day before "by hand"... Since his dreams weren't apparently about that... His palace entrance looked like a cupboard with a sloped ceiling; the kind you'd find under a flight of stairs in a suburban house. The back would open under his touch, revealing an Escherian network of stairs, where all the rooms were roomy cupboards lodged in improbable perspectives. He liked cupboards; he felt comfortable in them even though, if you'd have asked him _why_ , he'd have been too ashamed to answer.

When he was satisfied with his mental tidying up, he finally opened his eyes. Three hours had passed and the tension was mostly gone, the rooftop around him was as flat as ever. He took a swig off his thermos, got back to his flat for a quick shower, and off to work flipping burgers.

He hadn't really had a choice in the matter: his adoptive family had kicked him out the second he was legally an adult. His high school years had been okay at best, but he hadn't got any money for pursuing any form of higher education. So unqualified, tedious, menial work and a figurative shit hole for an apartment... Still, he was kind of happy being on his own. He felt healthy, if restless.

The days at work were all the same. At some point, his coworkers took a cigarette or coffee break; he had a different ritual. At the first opportunity, he would go in the back, sit crossed legged, close his eyes, and juggle for a few minutes. As the day moved forward and into the night, after the dinner rush, the restaurant emptied and he could do it more frequently. As closing time approached, he'd grow so bold as to do it behind the counter. And systematically, at the latest possible hour, when the restaurant was empty, right before it was time to close up and go home –

"Hello, Harry."

Her voice had a special way of cutting through his concentration. No matter how much expected it, he'd always lose control and drop however many balls he was juggling. Nobody else had that effect. It was especially weird because by now, he knew the sound and rhythm of her footsteps. He knew it so well he could mentally countdown to her salutation, steel himself as much as he wanted... And _everything_ would end up on the floor _every time_. And this time was no different.

 **Ponk!**

He had been contact juggling with a single, pretty heavy acrylic ball.

"Hi, Hermione. Long day again today, huh?"

"How are you not getting better _at all_?"

He went to the sink to wash his hands.

"I am! just not when you set my heart aflutter with your lascivious greetings. It's a case of observation disrupting the experiment. Like the watchamacallit... The Heisenberg principle?"

"You know what? Too bad. Today was the day I was gonna give you I my number but you ruined it."

"With my juggling mishap?"

"With your terrible understanding of physics. And who uses the word 'lascivious'? That's just creepy..."

"It is, isn't it. I heard it too but it was too late. You'd rather give it to one of your PhD students, then?"

She shuddered with disgust. She was a really, _really_ gifted academic. As a result, her PhD students tended to be the same age, if not older than her. And happened to be stereotypical theoretical physics graduates.

"Don't make me think about them... They're worse than you on both fronts... Understanding _and_ creepiness, I mean."

He handed her a bag of something that could be legally called either food or poison, depending on the context.

"Aren't you worried that I know your order by heart now? The next step is having your name on the menu, you know..."

"Yes. I am. But I'm too tired to actually do something about it."

"You work too much... Eating that won't help, though. You should let me cook for you sometime."

"You cook for me literally every day."

"Touché." He took her credit card, let her type in her pin number, ostensibly looking away. "Still... You should let me cook something better."

She gave him an inscrutable look as he returned her card. She stood there lost in thought for a minute. Eventually Harry broke under her unflinching gaze:

"Is... Is the thought of me cooking something better than what basically amounts to 'fried cholesterol' _that_ perplexing? Why do you look so discombobulated?"

"Disc... I'm not discombobulated, I don't get that way. You know what? I'll cut you a deal. When's your day off?"

"Thursday and Friday"

"Perfect. On Thursday, you shall have the pleasure of cooking a healthy meal and joining me for lunch... _But,_ in return for this inestimable favour, you'll have to follow me to the lab afterwards, and partake in an experiment."

"Well that escalated quickly"

"Not that kind of experiment."

"What kind, then, if not the fun kind?"

"All experiments are the fun kind." She was dead serious.

"...Yeah... Still though, how can I possibly help the field of theoretical physics? And how come a theoretical physicist performs experiments? It says 'theoretical' right there in the name."

"Yeah, but... It's a side project... about... movement... and... uh..." she trailed off, "interactions... human-machine interactions." She decided

"...Woah."

"Right."

"You... You really _cannot_ lie, can you? Like not at all?"

"No! It's just... I just thought it up! I didn't have time to come up with a freaking title... But it's just harmless measurements of motions and stuff. You'll get to show off your bare torso so I can install electrodes and motion capture instruments. Very sensual." The sensuality was undercut somewhat by her matter-of-fact tone.

"Well okay then. It should be fun indeed. Thursday at twelve?"

"Twelve-thirty. Imperial College, Huxley building, office 516. If you can't find it or if they don't let you in, ask for Dr. Granger."

"Perfect. Until then _bon appetit,_ and _buonanotte_ Dr Granger."

" _merci_ , and _grazie_ " flawless accents, of course... "see you on Thursday, Harry... Oh, who am I kidding; see you tomorrow, same time, same order."

Harry picked up his contact ball, and closed up shop before going home.

As he entered his flat, he was greeted with a strange scene. His window was wide open – which, first of all, why the hell was it? –, and an owl was staring at him from the windowsill. It was black with white spots, and had a very dark blue face with two shiny, yellow eyes stuck on it. It cocked its head, flapped a bit while turning its body toward Harry. It glanced at his bed and back at him once or twice, cocked its head again then left.

There was a letter on the bed, and if the cursive calligraphy was to be believed, it was addressed to him. Probably written in 1785... He opened it.

 _Dear Mr Evans,_

Maybe it was intended for a different Evans? He had had his name legally changed from Dursley only a year prior... From some sort of secret society? The Freemasons? They do mysterious bollocks on parchment, right?

 _I regret to inform you that due to an unprecedented fault in our instruments, we haven't been able to locate and contact you sooner. A letter of acceptance to our institution should have reached you 12 years ago, on your eleventh birthday_ (oddly specific, and the odds of this being intended for another Evans were getting slimmer). _It would have indicated that_ y _ou were invited to attend the Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry_ (pff- the _what_? No he'd read it properly... Some kind of roleplaying game, then?) _for the duration of your secondary education. Obviously, it's a bit too late for that; I would like to extend our deepest apologies for this most unfortunate mistake on our part, from the whole staff here at Hog-_ (he refused to read it again, it was too ridiculous) _._

 _The terrible awkwardness resulting from this baffling oversight notwithstanding, I must warn you that a wizard without a proper education is a wizard in danger. In consequence, even though it would seem that you have successfully found ways to cope with your wizarding condition_ (they kept saying 'wizard' as though it was supposed to mean something to him in that context) _, I would very much like to meet you and discuss the proper way to move forward from now on._

 _You will find enclosed a silk ribbon. Please, when you have time for a meeting, rub it between your thumb and index finger._

 _With my deepest apologies,_

 _Sincerely,_

 _Minerva McGonagall_

Well... There was a ribbon alright. Would he rub it? He felt kind of silly just asking himself the question... Rubbing a ribbon was a pretty innocuous thing to ask... Could it be doused in poison? Why not just fill the envelope with anthrax then... Maybe... Maybe it was that one drug that made you completely docile, and someone would burst in and have him do whatever they wanted... That's just ridiculous: how would they know he'd have rubbed the ribbon between his fingers? And he was pretty sure that particular drug had to be ingested. And why adorn such a devious ploy with such a strange letter? Shouldn't it be something about a Nigerian prince?

He shoved the letter in a drawer, washed his hands for good measure, and climbed on the roof. Whatever the letter was, it would require careful consideration as to what terrible thing it could be before... uh... before he'd act accordingly.

Once on the roof, he could finally let go of his day, of obviously made up names (he didn't know a lot of people, and there already was one _Hermione_ ; what were the odds of a _Minerva_ just showing up out of nowhere?), let go of their incomprehensible letters, of Dr. Granger's terrible nutrition habits, of his dwindling stash of nerve medicine. He could just forget everything and dance in his mind's eye.

* * *

That's the first chapter. Don't be afraid to tell me what you think; (yes, you may have noticed that I find the semicolon to be a thoroughly underrated piece of punctuation; you'll get used to them) I'm not a native English speaker, so any mistake you'd find on that front would be of interest. Obviously, any stylistic insight would be greatly appreciated.

I don't _think_ I've underestimated my rating, but there _are_ some slightly more adult themes and language coming. Hopefully, they're treated with enough distance as to be inoffensive to 13-year-olds. Don't hesitate if you think anything is inappropriate.

What else? The first few chapters are going to be mainly about reinterpretation of characters in this context, exposition of the why's and the how's, and refashioning the discovery from this new point of view.

Oh, and also I hereby disclaim any form of ownership over most characters and story elements, please do not give me money for it would be illegal... maybe... in some countries... I'm not actually very sure but it seems to be a tradition here to say this kind of things.


	3. Chapter 2

The office sporting the number 516 was oddly located. It was stuck between conference rooms in a way that almost suggested it had been purposefully isolated. Harry half-expected to find a sober office with a computer, some papers and a bunch of books. Instead, he was faced with a very large room – it had probably also been intended for conferences at some point – with no chair. There was a small desk in a corner facing a window, a blackboard occupying a whole wall, covered in incomprehensible symbols, diagrams, letters from every alphabet – was that _hebrew_? They used the _hebraic alphabet_ in physics? – with subscripts and exponents from every other. There were piles of books arranged randomly on the ground, and sheets of paper _everywhere_. On the ground, under the desk... Over _and_ under the piles of books Three bins were already full of crumpled papers and empty pens.

The papers were more or less covered with more script, in every colour known to man. Even parts of the walls around the huge blackboard had chalk writings on them, as if she just hadn't bothered stopping her line when she ran out of space. Some parts of the blackboard – and one chunk of wall – had a large "DO NOT ERASE" warning written of them in unfriendly capital letters. There were more than one sheet of paper just _stapled_ to the walls, and to the chock-full wall-sized library facing the blackboard from the other side of the room.

Hermione was on her knees, writing madly across five or six sheets of paper, cursing continuously.

"...Bugger the strigiformes! Fuck the Afroaves – no, you know what? Fuck _all_ those _ssstupid_ , stupid avian dinosaurs with their... their beaks and their f... fucking feathers and their fucking _flying around like the world belongs to them_!" as she shouted in exasperation, she straightened up, staring outraged at her blackboard, her furious eyes jumping from line to line " _Twats_! _Who opened m_ y wind- oh hello, Harry."

As she saw him, the white glow of rage in her pupils diminished, her expression softened from anger to awkwardness, and her hair seemed to settle in her hair band. Almost as if it had been electrified until then, and suddenly powered down.

"You're way scarier by day... If I had to guess, I'd say you need a break."

She sighed and looked at her wristwatch. "Probably... Wait a second."

She stomped to her desk, extracted her handbag from under it, took out her lipstick and wrote on the window before her desk.

 _To the cunt who opened this window:_

 _You are a_ _cunt_ _._

As she undid her hair and prepared to attack them with a hairbrush lying on her desk, she narrowed her eyes, pointed to a tree not far away and said through the window:

"And you... I see you over there, looking at me. You are also a _cunt_."

Hearing the pure hatred in her tone, he suddenly understood how Americans felt about that particular word. She drew a few red arrows pointing to the window and left the door open as they exited, so that a person's gaze would be attracted to the insults from the corridor.

"So... I surmise your office is not normally in that state?"

She didn't blush like a maiden, but her expression didn't do a very good job at hiding her embarrassment.

"Well... Admittedly it can get pretty chaotic when I work on too many things at once... But at least I have a system, you know? I'm told it can be pretty overwhelming from the outside, but... No. Not to _that_ extent."

The cafeteria wasn't far away. "Do you need to warm it up?" She asked, gesturing in the direction of a few microwave ovens, which he operated as she collected the cutlery and plates.

"I thought your work would require a computer"

She took an air of exaggerated pride "I don't _need_ a computer: I _am_ the computer!"

"She said, with pieces of her metaphorical hard drive still stuck to her shoe"

She checked her shoe soles and shot him a half-amused, half-annoyed glance "Also I can't use them"

 _ding_ , the oven chimed. Harry approached with his home-cooked meal and began to serve them. "How come?"

She shrugged "No computer has ever worked for more than a week under my supervision. The IT guy here was baffled. He's started kissing his pendant crucifix every time he sees me. I think at first it was a joke but now... Even the offices around mine have been affected. In the end they just stuffed me in a room with no computers around and I'm tacitly forbidden from touching anything with micro-electronics in it." She paused and looked at her plate, marvelling at the flavour she had absentmindedly tasted. "This is _amazing_..."

"Thank you."

"I'm serious, you should work in a _way_ better restaurant than that."

"Thanks... erm... I've had a lot of practice... " During his upbringing – or lack thereof – necessity had taught him how to cook, but not how to take a compliment properly.

"But anyway... Is that why you were standing away from the microwaves?" She nodded. "That sounds like a pretty serious handicap in your line of work... How do you write your papers then? Or... plot graphs and... do big calculations; you really are a genius, aren't you?"

"In order, yes but so's being a woman, I write them by hand and have a student type them up, and yes, absolutely, I am a genius, thank you very much. How about you? How does a fine young man like yourself end up serving fish and chips to defenceless maidens in seedy alleyways in the dead of night?"

"I have a passion for cardiovascular disease. So it was either that or heart surgeon. In the end, I chose the less lucrative one: didn't seem right, making that much money on such a grave thing. Also – on a more mundane note – I was broke, so medical school was out of the question and I needed a job..." Something struck him "Hang on... Earlier you said... Did you say 'strigiformes'? when I came in? That's owls right?" Her anger flashed back on for a second, but she calmed herself more or less.

"Yes. An _owl –_ of all things – entered through an open window, knocked down my books, messed my papers up, and I fortunately drove it off before it crapped on my desk."

"Huh... Did it... Did it leave a letter?"

She visibly didn't know what to make of the question "...Excuse me?"

"N-Never mind."

"No, I want to know. A letter for whom?"

"I don't know, it's just... I saw an owl on my windowsill a few days ago, and there was a letter on my bed... And I'm pretty sure my window had been closed when I left... And the letter was addressed to me, and it looked like it had been written with a quill– stop staring like I'm schizophrenic, please."

"Well, have you been checked? It could also be chronic hallucinatory psychosis."

"I do have a good memory..."

"People with CHP have good memory?"

"As I remember it, yes. So either they do or they just _remember_ that they do." She smiled at his Carrollian logic; he continued "I'll show you the letter if you want. It was quite mysterious... Shall we go get naked and experiment?"

She stood up "Let's. But first, tea."

Harry was sitting on a lab bench, topless, with a bunch of sensors glued to his torso, arms and head. There was a bunch of balls sitting in a basket next no him. They were made out of a semi-transparent plastic which looked like frosted glass, and seemed to have something shiny at their core. Harry was kind of cold, but his cup of tea warmed his hands pleasantly. Hermione seemed to be arguing with one of her student because she shouldn't be in the room where the data acquisition apparatus was: it was full of computers... The room in question was behind a window pane, and he couldn't hear everything, but she didn't seem to trust him to perform the measurement properly. He could probably use those balls to juggle while waiting... He'd do it over the bench, so that if Hermione spoke to him, he wouldn't drop them from too high. They didn't seem to be very close to an agreement anyway.

He laid down his mug and grabbed a few balls, closed his eyes and started. He was wrong: before long, they'd stop talking. He thought they had just started the acquisition and left. So that was the experiment, then? She'd probably send her student in to stop the acquisition and print the results when the experiment was over... As his concentration expanded, he perceived more and more of his environment. There was a videocamera filming him from behind the glass... Hermione was waiting in the hallway. The sensors did get in the way a bit, but he managed around them. Soon, he was even throwing in advanced moves; he included some contact juggling, making a ball roll across his arms or torso before throwing it back up, balancing another on his forehead, and letting it roll down to catch it between his cheek and shoulder. Hermione was periodically checking a mechanical stopwatch; she had gotten pretty far, so her presence wouldn't interfere with the experiment. He felt no one was watching, so he let himself go a bit. He stood up and started to use his full body. He remembered his legs didn't have any sensors, and the camera was still watching... So he sat back down. He wondered if he was supposed to continue for that long. The student was approaching. He entered the room, and Harry didn't interrupt himself.

"Hmm... so, apparently this is exactly what Dr Granger wants to study..." He had an Indian accent, "Do you need anything, Harry?"

"No, just... Should I stay seated?"

"You can move around, but keep the juggling to your upper body as much as you can."

"Oh. I used my feet a few time already."

"It's okay if it's only a few times."

"Cool. Then I'm okay."

He had kept his concentration and eyes closed for the whole exchange. Even though his moves had gotten simpler while he talked. He heard Hermione click on her stopwatch when the student left. So that was part of it? She'd noticed her uniquely deleterious influence on his juggling too, then... He wouldn't have thought it warranted such a fuss... But, if he had to guess, she'd probably walk in after a similar duration. He had a while to show off a bit, for the camera. Then, just as he guessed, she entered the room and spoke:

"Hello, Harry. So... Are you going to–"

Everything crumbled. He missed all five catches, and all five balls dropped to the ground. It was pretty noisy.

"… drop everything again. Yes."

He opened his eyes, she gestured to her student in the computer room as she clicked on her stopwatch one last time. The printer began whirring soon after, and Harry started his inquiry into what had just happened.

"So... you're working on juggling in the end... As it applies to human-machine interactions?"

"Right... no. I'll tell you as soon as I got the results. It might just be nothing. A fool's errand... so I didn't want to..." she lifted her gaze from her notebook, where she was still scribbling unreadable lines. "Well I didn't want to sound like a nut-job without proof, but after your owl story I feel pretty confident."

"Do you need another data point?"

She considered it.

"Nah, I think this one'll do, improvised though it may have been. If worst comes to worst we can discuss starting over; for now you can get dressed if you like."

She collected her papers and they got back to the hell-scape of her office. As he followed her in the corridors, she was coursing through the results. Looking at long tables of numbers followed by graphs, and trajectories, and commenting them colourfully under her breath.

"Bollocks... Complete and utter bollocks. Pffh- What? Now that's just not even close... Come on! Who'd believe that? Okay so it looks like that, but –" She flipped a page, and looked at a graph "And again, good sir, to that I can only respond 'bollocks'! Now, that's just insulting..."

They had walked to her desk, and she violently laid her pile of papers on it. Harry opened his mouth, but before he had a chance to speak, she shot an accusatory finger to a trajectory.

"See this? This should be a near perfect parabola. It's not even close, it's skewed, and the acceleration is nowhere near constant. It spikes at... 12.54 metres per second per second, and the lowest value is – that's just ridiculous – 5.6 metres per second squared Mr – What's your surname?"

"Evans, but if you'll just–"

"5.6 metres per second squared, Mr Evans. Do you know what it means?" She was scolding him for something now, apparently.

"...I don't. But I think you should-"

"I should nothing Mr. Evans." He felt like a teacher had caught him cheating on a test. She pointed to another graph "Also, see that? That's – not– possible!" Her finger tapped the pile of paper with each word for emphasis as she reached for a pen and scribbled around the graph "With our equipment, it should be like _that,_ at the very _most_. See? Nowhere close! Now. What it means, Mr Evans, is that you don't know how to juggle _at all._ "

"Certainly, but would you – wait what?"

"You don't know how to juggle Mr. Evans. What you're doing is not juggling; it's telekinesis."

Harry didn't know what to respond to that. There was a long pause. In the end he thought that, if nothing else, he at least had to point out _the other weird thing_. He approached the desk.

"Excuse me, do you mind?"

"What?" she still sounded inexplicably annoyed at him as he brushed past her, lifted her printouts, and extracted something from under them to show it to her.

It was a yellowish parchment envelope, on which what could only be a quill had written in beautiful calligraphy " _to Dr. Hermione Granger"_.


	4. Chapter 3

Hermione Granger had left work early for the first time in her adult life. She _should_ have used this once in a lifetime opportunity to go to sleep – it would have been her first full night in over a year – but instead she had followed a strange man to his flat. A strange man she had known for months, but a strange man nonetheless.

Oh what her mother would say! Actually, she knew exactly what her mother would say: she would say "I hope you at least had some fun, and didn't spend the whole night staring blankly at a pair of ribbons, wondering if you should rub them or not, trying to formulate rational hypotheses in the face of pure absurdity. Also, I hope you didn't antagonise your beau for his telekinetic abilities.". Evidently – also for the first time in her adult life – Hermione Granger would have disappointed her mother.

The tone of her letter was a bit more alarmed than Harry's. Syntactically, they seemed to respond to the same _logic,_ though, which tended to indicate that they had the same _meaning._ As to what that meaning actually _was_ , she felt like she was grasping at straws. The ribbon bit was particularly strange.

A significant portion of the night had also been allocated to explaining to Harry what she had meant before, about his telekinesis. She was still a bit flabbergasted that she'd been _right_ about the whole thing: when he juggled, he _didn't_ actually respect the equations of physics. During their flights, the balls should describe parabolas, whose sizes and widths would depend on the initial speed vector his hand defined for each throw. The trajectories could _maybe_ be _a wee bit_ skewed if the balls spun _really_ fast, thanks to the Magnus effect. Instead they were _all over the place_. It still more or less _looked_ like 'throwing and catching' in the abstract sense that they rose up, stopped for a bit, and came down in a pretty regular fashion, nobody – well, nobody _normal_ – would notice the difference.

But Hermione had a habit of estimating these kinds of calculations in her head. When she watched sports – admittedly rarely – she would estimate the inner pressure and elasticity of the ball as it deformed against a football player's shoe... Generally up to the second decimal: she could do more, but measuring with her eyes wasn't that precise anyway. Her ears were much better. When she heard music – thanks to her perfect pitch – she could approximate the diophantine equations that enabled harmony to arise from each note to the next; she could marvel at the miracle of the twelve-tone-equal-temperament system mirroring the actual physical harmonics of each sound, and at the infinity of expressions that arose from the slight imprecisions in that mathematical mirror... At the same time, she mentally explored the hypnotic arithmetics of rhythm, and if the recording was especially good she could even discern the possible shapes of the drums from their sound – they were usually round, but sometimes she had a surprise... These exercises were actually so soothing she often _couldn't fall asleep_ without listening to some light jazz.

If you have _any_ inkling as to the sheer complexity of all that, then you can easily imagine that, every evening, as she bought her dinner from some mad juggler, finding the initial velocity of a ball and approximating the gravity field on Earth shouldn't be easy: it should be _immediate_. It shouldn't _change for each throw_ , nor should it yield _undefined results_. And every evening, when it _did_ , she wanted to protest... But she didn't have proof. So she just said "Hello, Harry" and just like that, physics snapped back into place and the balls fell like they _should_. She was kind of glad that she had now spoken and proven her claim to Harry: she had felt like a detective having caught a criminal red handed, as he transgressed the laws of physics.

On the whole, it had been a pretty long evening. In the end, she had slept a few winks: he had offered to share the only bed in the room – as chastely as he knew how, of course – as soon it had become too late for her to walk safely in his neighbourhood (which was pretty early). The bed was roomy enough, and she'd fallen asleep pretty much instantly, Chet Baker's rendition of _M_ _y Funny Valentine_ firmly planted in her ears. But it was now seven and she had to phone in, to tell her students that she wouldn't be there today – that was yet _another_ first for her – because they were going to pluck up their courage and rub the ribbons... She couldn't find his phone. She couldn't find _him_ either.

She stood there for a bit, in the shirt he had lent her for the night, wondering wobbly-legged what to do. The flat was... frugal. Serpentine cracks adorned the walls and ceiling. By the way, the ceiling seemed to be vibrating. Not strongly, mind you, but _silently_. Too silently.

He was on the roof. He was doing something _weird_ on the roof, something _big_. She jumped in her skirt, almost fell, and climbed upstairs more cautiously. By the time she got there, he had finished whatever he had been doing. She found him sitting crosslegged, panting slightly, while a light breeze lifted some dust off the ground.

She waited a bit: she didn't really want to intrude on whatever that was, but that thermos looked inviting. She felt a bit dehydrated... She borrowed it silently and took a few sips waiting for him to be done with whatever mental exercise he was attempting. Eventually he opened his eyes and stared at her, then at the thermos in her hand.

"There's pot in that tea"

She stared at it a moment "... Noted. Do you have a phone?"

"There's a payphone downstairs, I'll take you in a moment."

She sighed and let her back rest against the outer wall of the staircase. He stared at her from the centre of the roof.

"Come here a minute."

"Why?"

"You're stressed out, let me try to help you relax."

She sat in front of him. For the next few minutes, he had her close her eyes, relax her back and neck, breathe in and out in different rhythms. Then he tried to get her to block out all the noise, to have her consciousness move around in her own body, to visit each muscle from the inside, then seep outside into the air around her. He told her to 'look for the air currents'. To her surprise, she seemed to get it. Maybe it was an illusion, but it seemed that she sensed the wind _around her_ , rather that on the surface of her skin... It was... _theoretically_ possible. A kind of holographic correspondence, maybe: grasping the full knowledge of the volume from the information located on its surface... She felt the currents circling her, their intensity rising then subsiding, then rising again as though the void itself was breathing. She naturally synchronised her own rhythms with it, and tried to mentally feel around for what was happening further away from her body: the currents were moving around an obstacle, some distance in front of her; it had to be Harry. She tried to determine his shape in the negative space of her new perceptions. He... It looked like he moved a bit, in complete silence. He was... waving at her? So he knew she could see him? Was all of that just the tea? She tentatively waved back...

"Good." He said. He hadn't talked in a while... "Now let your worries seep away into the wind, progressively."

Well that didn't really _mean_ anything. But somehow, a valve had already been opened. She felt a big, dark, pulsating tension leave her mind and flow into the air... It was slow at first, but she couldn't really stop it from accelerating... It felt _so good_ , finally letting go of that chaos inside her...

 _One must still have chaos in oneself_ , she remembered, _to be able to give birth to a dancing star_. What a beautiful quote... but _this... This_ seemed too literal to be what the moustachioed poet-philosopher meant. When she imagined a dancing star, the air felt warm around her...

Hermione tried to direct the tension away from Harry's silhouette... Around him maybe. It seemed like he was doing the same as her, kind of. As it left her mind, the dark chaos became bright: the same thing that had encumbered her mind with a somber weight translated outside of her into something messy and beautiful like a turbulent flow... It warmed the air some more... the currents rose up in a high-vorticity waltz around their bodies, and into the infinite space above. It felt happy and wonderful, like a hyperactive child captivated by a symphony for the first time. And Hermione was just smiling in peaceful silence.

There was a crackle in the distance, and the tiny voice of a woman – it sounded like it was trying to shout something... _I understand that this must feel really nice_ , it said _, but could you please stop what you're doing?_ Hermione didn't really want to stop. She wasn't even sure she knew how anymore. _Or... Maybe... Maybe_ _just open your eyes?_ That, perhaps she could muster.

It was harder than she expected, though. Her consciousness was spread thin and finding her eyes wasn't what one would call _easy._ She eventually found the muscles responsible for her eyelids' movements, and tentatively activated them. Her... other senses felt so powerful, it took a second for the sight to register. Harry hadn't opened his eyes, and the dancing star she had birthed... Well there seemed to be a column of bright golden flames encircling them. It was a pillar of fire, shooting up toward the sky, undulating slowly as it rose to tear up the heavy clouds... Oh. Oh _god_! Why was it so silent then?

With that thought, she allowed for the sense of hearing back around her: it came crashing like a nuclear blast, but before she could even reach to protect her ears, the sound was muffled again. Just like that. A flicker of thunder. She felt preternaturally calm, even though her brain was screaming that there was really no reason to feel so relaxed while engulfed in what literally was _a_ _cyclone made of fire_ , rising from her feet, slashing at the heavens above in roaring waves of dancing brightness. But at least _if_ she didn't panic, _then_ she could think. She stood up and approached Harry who apparently hadn't heard the tiny voice's polite requests _or_ the nuclear thunder.

"Harry" She said, laying a hand on his shoulder "Now it's my turn to tell you what to do."

He didn't move, but the flames crawling outwards on the floor from under him changed from a happy gold to an interrogative orange. She couldn't help but notice that they were small and well behaved, when compared with the wild torrents of excited blazes that were still rushing outwards from under her.

"You need to calm the currents down. I'm sure you know how... Make them disperse, slowly... calmly..."

He began working at it. The winds slowed down, the flames cooled down... He seemed surprised at how much... _vibrance_ there actually was around him. "Yeah..." She began, looking around her with her hand over her eyes "I may have gone overboard." He smiled a bit. When the maelstrom had calmed down, but not completely disappeared, she said "Now continue what you're doing, take a deep breath and slowly open your eyes."

Like her, the full consciousness of what was happening around him didn't strike at once. His brow furrowed as the fiery whirlwind became more and more red as it cooled down. By the time he seemed ready to speak, it had almost completely disappeared and Hermione could see silhouettes behind the thin, red hot, stormy veil of what had previously been her existential dread.

"Was that...? What we were doing? But I've done this a thousand ti– who the _hell_ are these people?"

There were about twenty men and one woman around them, all dressed in preposterous fashions. They were pointing small sticks at them, and they seemed pretty cross... Almost ready to fight. One of them opened his mouth and was clearly about to shout something menacing, but the woman of the group – the only one who wasn't pointing a stick in their direction – shot him a furious glare and his mouth snapped shut, with an expression like a grown man who'd just been scolded.

"Hello" The woman said "Mr. Evans, Dr. Granger. If I'd known you were acquainted with each other I would have offered to meet you both directly. My name is Minerva McGonagall, I trust you've received my letters?"

They stood silent. Eventually Hermione spoke up "Uh... Yeah?". Minerva looked at one of the men around them: "Would you kindly go obliviate anyone who looks like they've seen that? If there's too many, we'll fabricate something about freak weather due to global warming or something." The men hesitated, to her annoyance "Please _go_. I'm perfectly capable of having a polite conversation with these two young people on my own." Eventually, everyone's image twisted around itself in a loud crack and disappeared, leaving only the three of them standing around, and around 66.7% of them utterly dumbfounded.

"So." She said. "Shall we go get dressed and have a cup of tea?" Their clothes evidently hadn't tolerated the flames as well as they had. Using a bit of ingenuity, though, the remains could be arranged to cover what needed to be. Barely.

When Hermione fumbled about trying to cover one particularly ill placed blackened hole in her garments – and as if what had happened hadn't been enough for one day – the still pretty turmoiled heavens decided to take their revenge against her. So they struck down upon her with a righteous bolt of lightning: there was a bright light accompanied by a loud crack, a scorching pain, and then nothing.


	5. Chapter 4

To say Minerva McGonagall was shaken would be an understatement. In fact, it would be the understatement _of the century_. She was pretty certain that the sheer intensity of her current internal turmoil was orders of magnitude above what she had _cumulatively_ endured in her whole life. _However_ , she was a schoolteacher; she considered herself a well balanced, sturdy witch; and _above all,_ she was _British._

So, in accordance with her principles, she was sitting with her back properly straight in the elegant armchair she had conjured, and wore the same expression of stern quietness as she would have in class. No one could have told from her expression, but she was pretty annoyed at her right hand: it wouldn't stop shaking despite her best efforts, loudly rattling the spoon in her teacup as she slowly brought it to her mouth. She also tried not to stare, but _he_ had been pacing across from her in silence for a while now, and she could not deny that his _existence_ was an issue to add to the steadily growing pile of difficulties requiring her attention.

"So." She began. It was a good beginning. She would now have to choose between the three _incredibly urgent_ matters which were fighting for her _full, undivided attention_. She chose the one that seemed the easiest to dispatch and the most distressful to... Mr. _Evans_ : "Don't fear for your friend. Mr. Rosemary is a very capable healer, and it would seem that Dr. Granger is already out of the woods, so to speak. Mr. Rosemary is only being as thorough as possible with his tests."

That seemed to soothe him somewhat, even though the aforementioned healer still looked a bit distressed as he examined Hermione's still – if somewhat twitchy – form. "Now. As much as I would like to discuss the _very_ present trauma of Dr. Granger being struck by l- lightning under our very eyes..." Stuttering wouldn't _do,_ Minerva! She composed herself, Harry finally stopped pacing and sat down. "We have a lot on our figurative plate. Mr... Evans..." She trailed off: Mr. Rosemary's presence would be a problem for her second point, and she needed Dr. Granger awake for her third. "Please, excuse me a moment. Mr. Rosemary? Is all of this really necessary? Didn't you say she was okay now?"

"Well... She's okay... She was in a strangely good condition to begin with, but... Her nervous system is... I... I don't know what it is, I've never seen anything like it. Even her brain–"

"Is there a risk for her? And if so can you fix it?"

"No... to both questions; I think it's just how she was, whatever _it_ is... the lightning couldn't have done anything like _that_."

"Will she wake up?"

"Yes, probably in a few minutes."

"Then could you please go and assist the other Aurors? I'm sure your medical curiosity can be satisfied at another time."

The Auror medic fumbled embarrassedly, gave her quick a salute, and disappeared with a crack. He must have been feeling quite stupid on the other side of that apparition: who salutes to _schoolteachers_?

"Now, Mr. Evans... I don't know quite how to address this... Was 'Evans' always your last name?"

Harry gave her a confused look. "No... It used to be Dursley. My... My adoptive family's name."

"Whose name is Evans, then?"

"Well... I'm pretty sure it's one of my real parents'." She kept silent. He seemed to be uncomfortable talking about his family, but if she acted as though he hadn't answered her question, he would be compelled to develop. Again, she was a teacher.

"They never admitted that I wasn't theirs, but... They always made a point to treat me as if I wasn't part of the family." He broke eye contact, reminiscing these painful years "I didn't know why they'd adopt me if they hated me so much, but... One day I wanted to be sure, so I arranged for a paternity test... Well, they never knew about it. In fact, it wasn't entirely legal..." He remembered he was talking to someone he'd just met "Anyway, I found out he definitely wasn't my father, and though she _was_ related to me, we didn't share enough DNA for her to be my mother. She could be my aunt, so I took her maiden name, assuming it would be one of my real parents'."

Lily Evans had a sister? A _muggle_ sister? Who had a kid named _Harry_? And _no one had noticed_?

"Have you always had that scar?" He reached to his forehead.

"As far as I can remember, yes. Wait, how did you know?"

"When's your birthday?"

"June the 12th 1980... Are you about to tell me something huge about my identity?"

She paused. June... Someone had faked his death and put him in a muggle home with a fake paper trail to account for his birth _before_ the facts. The 'parents' probably had fake memories of his birth to perfect the lie, but subconsciously rejected the poor child. And _of course_ no one had noticed: who cares about muggles? Nobody, that's who. Dr. Granger had stopped twitching a while ago. She had started to shift slightly instead... She may have already been awake...Well, who cares... Twenty Aurors had seen him. They had seen his scar, which had been shown in the press before his 'death'...

 _Of course, you can't really survive Voldemort's killing curse_. That's what she had thought. That's what _everybody_ had thought. Especially the Dark Lord's eager fan club, in all likelihood... But he looked the spitting image of his father; he had the remarkable eyes of his mother... They were _celebrities_ , she couldn't have been the only one to notice, today... The news _would_ spread now; and he could do with a muggle born friend who'd understand him. Dr. Granger was opening her eyes...

"Yes." Minerva had pondered for so long that he had forgotten his own question. "I'm afraid I have some troubling revelations about your birth. But first, let me explain the contents of the letters: it will make those revelations easier to grasp."

"What happened? – _hrm_." Came the feeble voice of Dr. Granger. Her voice was very hoarse; her throat must have been forcibly clenched.

"You've been struck by lightning, my dear. You'll be okay, although your nervous system seemed very interesting to the healer."

"Oh." She sat up slowly, wincing. "Yeah, it's superconducting." They both looked at her like she had grown a third head. And she might as well have for all the medical impossibility... Minerva had come across the concept in an article about muggle levitation, and it did _not_ seem like it should apply to someone's brain. Dr. Granger turned to face them both, recovering her wits "Probably why I got struck... I made the measurement myself, after I tried having an MRI... which did not go well. The good news is, it's really hard to fry a superconducting nervous system. The bad news is when something tries – and some things do tend to do that –, it hurts like hell." There was a dumbfounded pause, before Minerva found her footing – with increasing difficulty, as she noticed.

"As much as I'd like to discuss both the cause and the consequences of such an _astounding fact_ , I have much to tell you both, and little time to do so. Mr. Evans, Dr. Granger, you are both _magical._ You, young man, are a _wizard_ ; you, young lady, are a _witch_." They didn't protest. Then again, since she didn't have any fire or lightning coming out of her mouth, she could see how it compared to everything that had just happened. "I am also a witch as I demonstrated earlier" She gestured to her conjured chair, and made its shape shift a little for good measure. "Magic is a trait that can either be inherited, or occur spontaneously. It is also a well guarded secret to those who don't possess it. Usually, magical people are detected early, and offered a spot in our school on the day of their eleventh anniversary."

"The Hogwarts so and so." Harry offered.

"Indeed. In both your cases, however, _something_ went wrong. It had never... _accidentally_ happened before, but you both weren't even _detected."_ She took a slow, still pretty rattled sip of her tea and they waited in silence. "Which is a grave matter."

"Why? _Hrm_..."

"Because when a magical child is denied an education, the magic just builds up unfocused inside him, interferes negatively with his emotions and eventually finds potentially... violent avenues to express itself. It can become so serious as to result in the child's death, and a significant amount of damage to those around him."

"We could _explode_?" Harry became agitated; she raised a calming hand.

"No. Not as such. Firstly, it wouldn't be an explosion..." it would be much, _much_ worse _"_ and secondly neither of you is in such a grave danger for now: it would seem that you both have thankfully stumbled upon relatively healthier ways of evacuating the accumulated power. However, I'm sure you often experience some... emotion management problems; they would most certainly be cured if you were to receive an _actual_ magical education. Still, I must say: I'm quite impressed with the original uses of magic you both have found to relieve the stress during this unfortunately long wait.

"In fact, I believe that the state of your nervous system is attributable to that, Dr. Granger: you're probably subconsciously doing it to yourself as we speak. As for Mr P–... Evans, As I understand, your extraordinary morning routine and your meditation practices are disguised, fairly structured uses of your magic as well. I'm quite confused as to how you never _noticed,_ though. Even if you mostly kept your eyes closed..."

"I always do... It helps me concentrate..."

"And you've never noticed the ground shifting under you, the air warming around you..."

"I just assumed it was my... well not my imagination _per se_ , but... my meditation influencing my own perceptions."

Dr Granger's throat was getting better: "Excuse-me, I'm confused. Could you not tell that we were doing magic? You seem to have ways of detecting that." That young lady could think on her feet, for someone who could barely stand on them.

"Normally yes, we would have. But... I'm not exactly sure how it came to pass but... Well your... _traceability_ seems to have been tempered with. In other words, you were purposefully hidden from our instruments. Which brings me to my last point: Mr. Pot – I mean Mr. Evans's true identity."

"Let me guess: it starts with 'Pot'." Even his quips sounded like his father's.

"As far as I can tell, your father's name was James _Potter_ , indeed. Your mother's maiden name was Lily Evans. They were both well regarded members of the magical community... Until... I'm sorry there is no polite way of putting this: until they were murdered, 22 years ago." She paused; he visibly would have very much liked to find something to say. Eventually he had to settle for "How do you know?"

"I knew them both personally: I was their teacher; the resemblance doesn't leave any room for doubt. Moreover that particular scar is a remnant of that fateful night: it was shown in the papers at the time.

"As for the culprit... He was a maniac who had been terrorising the magical world for quite some time. In fact, one could say we were at war against his forces. He was very powerful... Many thought him unstoppable, actually. So... for the rest of us, there was a silver lining behind your parents' – and as far as anyone knows, _your_ – tragic demise. It was a... rather obscure bout of magic, which seemed to counteract his spell as he tried to kill you, and killed him instead. You were actually hailed as a hero... They called you the _boy-who-lived_... For all of one day: your death was announced the morning after. Evidently, the proof was fabricated, and _someone_ went to great lengths to hide you from our world... Presumably to protect you from retaliation from..." Deep breath: he needs to know the names " _Lord Voldemort'_ s _Death Eaters_ – that's how the madman called himself and his followers."

That was a lot to take in. Which would give her time to sip her tea, and she needed it _direly_. She watched several emotions come and go on his face as he tried to interiorise what he had been told. Disbelief came back often; so did melancholia. Dr Granger seemed pretty stunned herself. Eventually, he silently stood up, fetched his thermos – as she understood, it was full of a different sort of tea –, opened a cupboard under his sink, extracted a bottle of scotch and started to pour the contents in the tea. He obviously needed a break. She decided to let him breathe and focus on his friend: there was plenty of mystery to go around.

"As for you Dr. Granger... Well the reasons for your untraceability seem less obvious. As far as I know, your parents are muggles – it means non-magical people –, and I can't really find a reason for anyone to either _want_ or even _know_ to keep you from the magical world. To anyone at the time, you would have seemed like a perfectly innocuous muggle baby... So the only explanation would be... But you'd have lived too far... Where did you go to school?"

"Huh? A boarding school named St-Mary-the-Merciful... In – _hrm_ – Surrey. It was full of judgemental nuns but they had a special class for children with high learning potential. It was supposed to be a middle school but I was quite advanced at 9 already, so..."

"What was the closest town?"

"Oh, it was in Little Whinging. A bit south of London."

Harry coughed a bit on his Irish-Jamaican tea. McGonagall took it upon herself to explain.

"Then, the protections on Mr. P–" she hesitated "the protections on Harry's magic could have been strong enough to cover part of the town he lived in, which happens to be Little Whingin in Surrey. It seems whoever wanted to hide him was both capable and determined. Maybe even a bit overzealous." And he would soon find himself on the short end of a stern talking to... She sighed inwardly, suddenly filled with melancholy and regret at the sheer pointlessness of that particular thought.

When she lifted her eyes, Harry was looking into them sharply. "You know exactly who did it, don't you?" Had she been so obvious? She broke eye contact, embarrassed. "I... I have an inkling, yes, but–"

"No... You know exactly who it is. Can we meet him?"

Was he a legilimens? He hadn't even been taught his first spell... How could he know something so complex? His meditation? But with his eyes closed every time, how could he... Well add _that_ to the list. Maybe she had just given it away. She sighed, defeated.

"I know who it is, in any likelihood... But a meeting would be useless: I'm afraid he has put himself in a magically induced coma."

"Oh. Why?"

She sighed again. "Well... He was dying. He had contracted a curse which would certainly kill him..." Just in case, she refrained from looking in Harry's eyes as she remembered his last words to her... That he believed Voldemort would return... To wake him when he did... But as wise as he was, the old man had no proof to offer. As it stood Harry didn't need that can of worms to remain open forever, and in any case he didn't need to know _right now._ It was time to take her leave.

"I'm sorry. I think we all need to rest now. Can I trust you not to do... whatever it is you were doing on the roof for at least the rest of today? Good. I'll come back tomorrow and give you a tour of magical Britain, before taking you to Hogwarts... If you wish to learn more about magic, of course." They nodded. "Good! You probably won't... integrate with the other first year students, but–"

Dr. Granger gasped "My _students_! They'll think me buried in a shallow grave!" She grabbed her handbag and ran outside in the pyjamas that the healer had transfigured on her.

Minerva exited soon after. She thought she'd walk a bit before apparating away. Sorting her thoughts would do her good. In the street, she waved to Dr. Granger, who waved back, without interrupting her animated conversation. It sounded way more mundane than what they had just endured. A nice respite from all that... She let the half-conversation follow her footsteps in the silent street, filling her head with more comfortable concepts.

"Yes, – hrm – I _know_ that I wouldn't stay home when I had _staphylococcus-aureus-_ induced endocarditis _,_ but this time... This time I've been struck by lightning. Yes, seriously... No, it's not a _throatache_ , I wouldn't stay home for a _throatache_ , I'm not a six-year-old! – _hrm_ – I _know..._ I have a love-hate relationship with electrons; what can I say... No, don't say it, don't say–... Srivinasa, I'm sorry but you can't laugh at your own joke when it's 'you're too negative'."

She had imitated a stupid voice in an Indian accent, which was hard to pull off without sounding utterly racist, and harder still with a throat condition. Still, she had managed pretty well.

"That's just not funny enough. Plus there were multiple strikes and the first couldn't have lasted for more than 15 microsecond; so if anything I was too _positive_. Yes there are _two_ kinds of lightning strikes, Srivinasa, how can you not _know_ that? Of course I could tell, who do you think I am... What?... It was very painful, and I have to go lie down, now, if you don't mind. No, not tomorrow, I'll probably take a week–... Srivinasa, don't shout: I am a responsible adult, of sound mind and body – more or less –, master of my fate, captain of my soul and so on, and I have decided to take a week of vacation... _No,_ I am not _dying_!.."


	6. interlude

They were _baked_.

His remaining stash had entirely gone up in smoke. Well... almost entirely. He had decided to quit his self-medication, now that _educating his magic_ was supposed to regulate his emotions, as ridiculous as it sounded. So naturally, they _had to_ finish his stash, otherwise it would just have been wasted. Neither of them liked to waste things.

They were lying in his bed with the lights dimmed. Just chatting away while staring bloodshot eyed at the cracked, yellowish ceiling. She was under the covers and he was on top of them at her side, half-naked. The window was open to let the smoke escape, but he found the afternoon unseasonably warm. Maybe it had something to do with the column of fire that had appeared on his roof, earlier.

"Damn... We forgot to ask about the ribbons... What do you think they were for?"

"Mmmh... Probably communication devices, or a witch-summoning apparatus of some sort." Her voice had gotten better despite the smoke. She still preferred to speak in half-whispers.

"That makes sense... How did you test your nervous system?"

"Turns out it's pretty simple. EDA: Electro-Dermal Activity: you can just measure it on the skin, send a signal through some nerves... deduce their approximate resistance. It was pretty much zero, therefore I'm a superconducting witch." She shot her fist in the air in triumph.

"How is it possible though?"

"Well magic, _duh_. Didn't you hear the lady?"

"No I mean... Isn't the electrical charge carried between neurons by big-ass molecules and... Ions and whatnot? Can it still be superconducting if the current isn't made of electrons?"

"...Well, colour me impressed... Please don't take it the wrong way but I didn't expect you to know your biology."

"I have good memory, thanks to the chronic hallucinatory psychosis. Also, please don't take it the wrong way but I kind of expected you to think that biology is a joke sub-science not fit to wipe your theoretical physics feet on."

"Oh, it is... Okay get ready for real science, biotch. Usually, superconductivity appears when the electrons sync up with the... with the microscopic vibrations inside the conductor..."

She made waving motions with her hands at the ceiling, trying to illustrate.

"So instead of just an electron, you get two things moving as one: an electron plus a small mechanical wave. That's called a 'Cooper pair'... And the 'Cooper pairs', they... they can sort of _phase through_ each other. Your particles don't to bump into each other, so they don't lose any energy as they move, and that means your conductor has zero resistance. That's superconductivity. Quantum stuff is pretty indistit... indist... Don't mock me it's my first time trying to speak with tetrahydrocannabinol in my bloodstream; Quantum stuff is pretty _in-dis-tin-guishable_ from magic anyway; we don't actually understand _everything_ about superconductors."

"So you just... Your nerve molecules are like ghosts phasing though each other?"

"...I don't think so... If I had to venture a guess, I think my neurons vibrate in _exactly_ the right way to would forms pseudo-Cooper-pairs: mechanical waves in the cell with a charged molecule inside it instead of an electron... That would require a lot of impossible tweaking of the physical properties of cells to make superconductivity out of _that_ but _hey! Magic!_ " She had whispered the last words with the mystical tone of a prestidigitator showing off his assistant split in twain.

"I feel the understanding washing over me." He lied.

There was a pause as she dropped her still waving hands on the approximate location of his shoulder.

"Hey... I'm sorry about your parents."

"Don't worry about it. I never knew them... I've led a relatively happy life before I knew; it won't change just now."

"No... Well yes, I _am_ sorry about them, but also I mean... I'm sorry about your _adoptive_ parents. They sound like twats."

"Oh... Yeah they are. I also have a... a cousin, I guess. He's also a twat..." He trailed off.

"...Did you learn how to meditate from somewhere?"

"Yeah... but I've also learned how to juggle, and apparently I don't actually _know_ how to do either of these things."

" _How_ did you learn, though?"

"Books mostly. Well _a_ book. By a certain Dr. Alphonso Doubledecker."

"That is a made up name."

"They're all made up" She smiled. She had hoped he'd reply with that kind of joke.

"...Can't ague with that."

"It was a decent method, though. I found it in the Dursley's house when I was young; I should still have it if you like... Why theoretical physics? You seem to like the experimental method, and from what I've gathered you don't get to use it much..."

"The truth is... Well I kind of knew about the magic thing. Stuff kept happening around me that shouldn't, so... I guess I wanted to see if I could find an explanation, and down the rabbit hole I went...'No Mrs. Granger,' they said 'Glass cannot shatter _for no reason_. It can break when it resonates with a sound at its proper frequency, or when its temperature varies quickly, and also there's a very funny thing called a 'prince Rupert's drop', you should look it up, but it can't just _explode because you're looking at it funny:_ where would the energy come from?'..."One day – we had just seen the mass-energy correspondence and Noether's theorem in class... Basically the big theorem that ends up with 'energy doesn't just _vanish_ '... And I had... Well I had said something really stupid to antagonize my parents... I don't remember exactly what..." she lied "...It's not important. Basically I was a teen having a crisis because I wasn't mature enough for college life, and I said something pretty terrible to them... Afterwards I felt awful and really embarrassed and alone... And during the night I just _shrunk._ Alice-In-Wonderland-style, I mean. I went to weigh myself – which wasn't really easy because I was so small... too small to see the needle on the kitchen scale: I had to drag my compact around the house which was _already_ hard to navigate _without_ a relatively huge mirror... In the end, I found out I weighed less than a hundred grams."

"Bollocks."

"That's what _I_ said! Where did 99.9% of my mass _go_? If it just _disappeared_ , there should be a _massive explosion_... Like _the-whole-atmosphere-is-plasma_ kind of big. And I knew I wasn't crazy because it was _way_ too structured to be a hallucination or a dream: I measured my weight properly, all my perceptions were coherent, I wasn't acting paranoid or agitated at all, considering... There was no smoking caterpillar _or_ smiling cat in sight...

"So anyway... I've been studying Theoretical Physics in order to find a way to explain... well... magic. I wanted to find where can I insert magic so it fits in with physics. I thought I was the only one, though. I didn't expect to find a telekinetic cook."

"So what are you working on? For realsies... When you're not stripping fast-food chefs to 'experiment' on lab benches?"

"Constructive and Algebraic Quantum Field Theory."

"That... Is a made up name. See? All of them."

"Indeed... Basically I'm trying to prove that the most effective, most precise theory science has ever wrought is... well that it actually exists. Physicists keep using it but it's never been completely _defined_."

Harry chuckled "That seems like it would be a problem."

"The point is once I've done that, I can maybe expand on it and put magic where it should be... hey, how did you learn to cook?" She suddenly turned to face him.

There was an awkward pause as he took too long trying to formulate an answer. He hadn't been prepared for that question and he suspected she had purposefully taken him by surprise. She nudged him in the ribs with her finger from under the covers.

"Come _on_ , I've been telling you my life story..."

"Yeah but... To tell you the truth, I don't know how to tell you mine without sounding all whiny and miserable."

"Oh. Is _that_ why you always deflect?"

"What?"

"As soon as the conversation seems like you'd have to talk about personal matters, like your childhood or your family, you weasel out of it with a joke or a question about me."

"Oh? I'm sorry..." He took a drag on his self-medication, and sighed it out "Okay. I'll tell you but you may _not_... commiserate."

"Deal. So how did you learn how to cook?"

"By doing it. I had to: I mostly wasn't invited to the table when they ate; they stopped providing food for me as soon as I was physically capable of taking care of it myself. Pretty soon I had to cook for them, and they... had a knack for formulating criticism."

"How so?" He repressed a sigh at those memories.

"By shouting them in colourful language, and throwing the food away either at the garbage bin or at me. I could only eat after they were done, and... Well I wasn't allowed to eat very much... They'd accuse me of being _wasteful_ , if you can believe it... I was pretty much hungry all the time, so starting over every time they didn't like it got pretty old pretty fast. So did cleaning up. So I had to get better at it."

"I'm not commiserating, this is an objective statement: that's awful."

"It _was_ , but now I know how to cook, a _nd_ I really enjoy cooking for myself and people I like..." He glanced at her. She noticed, but didn't seem to be quite finished with her inquiries.

" _Why_ did you teach yourself meditation? Don't take it the wrong way but that's usually an... older people thing."

"That's a good question... I guess... I may not have ever really admitted it to myself, but weird stuff happened around me too." He started to reminisce events he hadn't thought about for a long while "Glass shattering was a classic... There was also a bit of levitation... Oh, and there was that whole debacle with the snake and Dudley – that's my cousin... He found himself in a pretty dangerous situation with a snake when a window pane just _disappeared_ at the zoo... Did I... have a conversation with the snake, too?.. I'm not sure: I was pretty out of it at the time, and I'm pretty sure I have repressed most of it... Anyway, my family got pretty... _vocal_ at me after these things happened... And they tended to happen when I was distraught, so I eventually made _that_ connection, and decided to teach myself how to be in control of my emotions. Unfortunately it got harder as I got better."

"I know the feeling...What are their names? The parents? You made every effort _not_ to say..."

"...Are you actually a shrink covering as a scientist?"

"After this one you're off the hook, I promise."

He sighed " _Petunia_ and _Vernon_ Dursley. Pretty mundane, huh?"

"Oh, you could have just told me _that_ from the beginning: I would have despised them instantly... Thank you for telling me all this, Harry."

"Don't mention it. So do I get to ask _you_ something, now?"

"Mmh... You may."

"Why do you work so much? With a brain like yours it's not like you couldn't take it a bit easier..."

"Oooh... That is a vengeful question..." She took the horrendous, shameful, illegal drugs from his hands: her rock-solid superego seemed to be waking up and it wasn't the best time. He smiled a bit, seeming proud that his question had struck a nerve.

"It is. Revenge is a dish best served lukewarm, with a pinch of irony."

"I guess I deserve it..."She sighed softly, letting out beautiful convolutions of intricate, scented turbulences escape from her lips and nose to waltz overhead. "It's the only thing I've ever known. Well... Not really, but I've always been the youngest and smartest in my class. Most gifted children end up... _equalizing_ as they get older; I got worse and worse. Even at St-Mary's, I ended up kind of ostracised. In college, students were either envious or uninterested in making friends with a _child_ , and those who made an effort, well... I wasn't very good at making an effort back at them. Teachers were very understanding, they tried to help me but they ended up out of their depth pretty soon too. Of course, the whole magical-mishaps getting more and more dangerous, the magnetizing computers and my being generally weird didn't help my feelings of inadequacy... "

"You're pretty good at conversation for someone who's had so many social difficulties growing up."

"Why, thank you! It's not been easy; it's pleasant for one's hard work to be acknowledged. Unfortunately, the only way I knew how to work on my sociability was to completely exhaust myself intellectually. Otherwise I would just be too tense and awkward and – _figuratively_ – explode at people. _Once_ , it was literal actually, but it was just a... stun grenade kind of thing. And only one person witnessed it, so I could pretend that he was just having a weird kind of epileptic seizure and let the doctors wonder what happened... He kind of deserved it anyway. But as you said, _Hopefully,_ magical education is going to fix all that." She looked at the illegal herbs letting out a mesmerising trickle of blueish smoke as they consumed themselves between her fingers. "This stuff seems to be working pretty well too... I wish I'd discovered it sooner."

"Doesn't it? I found out about it in high school. I usually prefer it infused, both for the health of my lungs, and the dampening and increased duration of the effects."

"mmh..." She put it down "Wanna snog?" There was a short pause as a result of her unusually bold move; her superego had clearly gone back to sleep.

"...I do, very much. _But_ – and I'm terribly sorry if this kills the mood, please blame it on the residual confusion from this morning – aren't you afraid that woman'll come back tomorrow and announce that..." He started to speak in a high pitched, terribly offensive imitation of Prof. McGonagall's posh voice.

"Mr Potter – Evans – Dursley – Harry dear. I'm terribly sorry but I've just realized: Dr Granger is actually your long lost _sister_ whom everyone thought had been a stillbirth, but it turns out they had just mistaken her for a ripe melon wrapped in a towel. Also, her real name is Evangelica Mathurina Potter-Evans-Granger and she was conceived during a hailstorm which explains everything about her condition _and_ why she was never found..."

Hermione was laughing a genuine, crystalline laugh. That was rare, usually she just flashed amused smiles and playfully judgemental eyes. She stopped pretty quickly, though.

"Oooh... Don't make me laugh, I'm still a bit sore... How come you get the fancy murder-accidental-suicide and I just _sort of look like fruit_?"

"Your wish is my command, milady" He started the imitation again "But actually, they just _said_ that it was stillbirth. In _fact,_ what happened is that an evil wizard, _Herr Todesfallvernichtung,_ slipped on a melon and landed on her crib killing both himself and the melon! Evidently, _someone_ (who shall remain anonymous because I totally don't know who it is, no I don't), someone thought it wise to protect her from Herr Todesfallvernichtung's dark guild of followers: the terrible _.._. _cancer gourmets..._ What are you doing?"

She was pulling the covers from under him, carefully wrapping herself into them as she exited the bed. He sat up against the wall to let her take them.

"I need to get something, and my pyjamas seem to have... _poofed_ out of existence."

"Like the chair?" She was now rummaging in her handbag awkwardly with one hand, maintaining her heavy outfit in place with the other.

"Exactly like the chair. Fortunately..." She had to pause as she extracted a big hardcover book, with difficulty and laid it on the ground... "... the aforementioned..." and another – how _heavy_ was this thing? Her handbag arm must have been made of tempered tungsten "...disappearing chair _– pfew –_ tipped me off just in time, and I've been hiding under this duvet ever since. You didn't notice? Here." Her free arm handed him a photo, revealing flashes of naked shoulders as she stood by the side of the bed, looking like a brown haired burrito in her makeshift attire. That duvet was pretty heavy but she held it up with only one hand, four dainty fingers emerging from just under her throat and sinking into its folds. It must have been her handbag arm... He ripped his eyes from her and forcibly glued them to the photo.

"Are these your parents?"

"Yep." She pointed a helpful finger at their faces and explained: "Notice how they look nothing like you and neither do I."

"True, true indeed..." They had a happy smile and a confused-looking baby between them, overlooking a big cake with a single candle illuminating all of their faces. "You do, though... They seem nice" As he was admiring the picture, savouring an inexpressible emotion in the back of his mind, he felt one of her hands rest comfortably on his shoulder. Then, he saw the other one gently take the photograph away, dragging his thoughtful gaze along with it... She laid the photograph face down on the nightstand, all the while keeping her left hand on his shoulder.

"So?.. Wanna snog?"

He nodded at her, a dazed look in his dilated pupils: "Yes, please."

* * *

Thanks for the reviews! Please review this one too, I need all the input I can get.

In fact, I especially need your help today: this one was particularly hard to write, between the science talk and the ending.

I wanted the _hands_ thing at the end to be subtle, but not to the point of being _completely invisible_. So I've added more and more hints, and now I'm afraid it's too obvious. I think it's perfectible but I'd need your input... So please, show of hands, everyone:

Who caught it? How was it if you did?

Who caught it and thought it was pretty obvious?

Who caught it, but only because I just now mentioned that there was a _hands_ thing at the end?

Who has no idea what I'm talking about?

Also, I promise the magical world is coming soon; I just wanted to develop the characters before they discovered it.

And consider this story disclaimed and Mrs Rowling thanked for her goodwill and patience towards our community of amateur writers.


	7. Chapter 5

The drive was more or less silent, apart from Minerva's periodic directions to Hermione as her second hand car swam through the morning fog. Minerva couldn't help but notice the newfound awkwardness between the two young wizards. As the Headmistress of an educative institution – whose students routinely lived to be seventeen – she had an inkling as to what it meant, not that it was any of her business... Minerva didn't feel at ease in cars. It wasn't the first time she was sitting inside a lump of metal made to be hurdled amongst others, hoping against hope that no collisions would occur, but she couldn't really get used to the idea... Rationally, she knew it was for the best: she didn't want to scare them off too soon with side-along Apparition or Floo, and they objectively weren't going _that_ fast. Also, since they were basically metal cages, cars should be safer than brooms... So why were there so many fatal accidents involving them?

They parked safely in front of the Leaky Cauldron, and she guided them through the back into Diagon Alley.

That was her favourite part: looking at her charges as they discovered everything with stars in their eyes. They looked like tourists, marvelling at every little thing. Especially Harry who's attention was caught by another magical contraption literally every two steps. He probably wouldn't have acted very differently at eleven. The usual questions acquired a different flavour when voiced by grown up theoretical physicists, though. Dr. Granger was scribbling furious notes in a lump of haphazardly folded papers she had extracted from her handbag.

"How come normal peop–... How come _muggles_ don't realise that they have to circumvent enormous chunks of the city?"

"Well... There are repellent wards: we magically influence them to stay away from around here. They always conjure good reasons for their detours."

"Planes?"

"They don't fly around here for the same reason."

"Okay... but what if someone lived in a tall apartment building with the right orientation? Couldn't they just see this place from their window?"

"They would see a series of boring buildings and think nothing of it. They wouldn't want to verify the buildings' existence because of the aforementioned repellent effect."

"And how do you keep all that hidden from satellites?"

"There are complex untraceability wards which can also prohibit things from appearing on muggle photographs and optical instruments"

"But... What you're saying is just 'it's magic'." Dr. Granger interrupted her note-taking, seeming somewhat frustrated.

"Yes... What else would you have used?"

"But how do the wards actually _work_? I guess I'm okay with influencing the human brain and its perceptions in some way or another, but how can you trick a _photograph_? It just dumbly reacts to light... Does our light not reach the camera? If so _why_ doesn't it show up as a dark spot? You'd have to distort space itself if you wanted light from the surrounding city to cover for us and fill the hole in the image..." She paled a bit, trailed off and began writing with renewed furiousness. Minerva realised they weren't actually notes but calculations.

"I am told that the wards _do_ distort the trajectories of light in a way that makes the city seems continuous from above."

"But... _That's_... How..." Her panicked gaze oscillated between the professor and her scribbled lines of intricate symbols. "So you just have _naked singularities_ hanging around around above us? What do you do when some flying object crosses those 'wards' and gets shredded by the infinite gravity?"

"Oh! I don't think they use something quite as complicated as that, dear. I believe they just bend light _without_ the use of gravity."

Hermione didn't know whether to be relieved that those _maniacs_ weren't shredding the surrounding space-time to pieces just so they could remain hidden from view, or to be horrified that magic could just _bend light_ more steeply than black holes as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She had to admit that – disproving her previous claim to Harry – she _sometimes_ got discombobulated. She didn't really have time to digest that weirdness either: they had arrived at the bank

While Prof. McGonagall was waiting in the lobby, and Harry had gone to visit his inherited vault – apparently the little disgruntled creatures in charge of the bank _never_ stopped looking for a next of kin for _any deceased_ client, which was probably a heavy socioeconomic burden to carry _–,_ Hermione was in the process of opening an account of her own and changing some of her hard-earned _scientist_ money into loosely defined _wizard_ money. To buy magic stuff. It didn't seem like a sound thing to do, but filling forms soothed her a bit; she wasn't feeling at ease, light-bending notwithstanding.

Her tension had come back full force in the morning: she had fallen asleep without the use of music after the first day off in her adult life, but she now had to deal with the consequences. That and the memories of her altered state of mind which put a sort of dissonance in her every thought. Or maybe it wasn't the drugs. Maybe it was just the overall lack of realism. Not to mention the uncharacteristically casual s–... you know what? I changed my mind: I won't mention it at all. The half-evoked memory gave her a sudden, ill-defined sensation which induced an incomprehensible quiver; it was both pleasant and uncomfortable.

What I _will_ mention is the fact that she couldn't stop asking _questions_.The unpleasant little Goblin – rather unfortunate name for a species – wasn't hiding his displeasure at her inane interrogations about their financial laws and economy. She didn't even really care about the answers, really: she just couldn't help trying to overload herself with information.

When she came back to the lobby she found Harry sitting in a chair, looking dazed, confused, and a bit queasy, while Prof. McGonagall was obviously trying to think of what to say to him. Hermione approached them in the hope that somebody would explain before she had to manage her stress levels and ask him. Fortunately, Harry really wanted to talk to someone.

"So... Apparently I'm filthy rich."

"Does that mean you'll quit your job as a 'cook'?" She had air-quoted. She never air-quoted. Also, it was a sincere question: she liked buying her dinner from him every evening and would be _sad to see him go_ ; and the more she thought about it, the stupider it sounded in this particular context... Intoxicated coitus had definitely _not_ helped with her inability to interact properly. Or maybe it was just because she hadn't worked in such a long time. Fortunately, this _mess_ of a social interaction could be construed as a joke.

"A more appropriate question would be 'will I buy the whole British fast-food industry?' This is not a hyperbole."

"Oh... Oh!"

"The Potter family was..." Minerva started "Well, _is_ a noble family of sorts..."

"Yeah, 'cause also they have 'nobles of sorts', here... I don't know what to do, though... I've never been _rich_." Harry looked pretty pale indeed. Being hurled from right above the poverty line to buy-your-own-country rich in less than a second could do that, she guessed. So now, Hermione had to conjure a piece of advice.

"Just... Do what you usually do... Live like you're used to, try your best to use it only for your needs and not for you wants... Eventually, you'll get used to the idea and you'll have a better notion of what to do with it."

"Yeah... I guess that makes sense... Thanks." He still seemed a bit out of it, but the idea of simply 'not overhauling his whole life right the fuck now' seemed to appease him a little. Hermione thought that humour would probably bring him back to the realm of the living.

"So... What's the protocol? Do I have to call you 'lord' or something? How meekly should I curtsy?" It worked:

"It should be 'Most Noble and Potent Prince Potter, son of Potter, defender of the throne of Magical England and also Sheik of Araby' but I'll allow a simple 'lord' depending on how meekly you can curtsy."

"Sheik of Araby?"

"Yes. Your love belongs to me, by the way."

"Does it, now?"

"It does; at night when you're asleep, into your tent I'll creep."

"This song is way more disturbing without the music."

"Is it? Even if the stars that shine above will light our way to love, and you'll rule this world with me, the Sheik of Araby? I genuinely thought the Lennon-style glasses would pull me through this."

"They really didn't."

"Okay, then. You may call me 'lord' and I wont creep etc., as long as you give me _one_ curtsy."

Well, she had made her figurative bed.

"I'll give you some 'lord' if you give me some 'doctor'."

"Then you've got yourself a deal, Doctor Granger."

She curtsied as meekly as she could: "Lord Potter; shall we get on with our shopping?"

"Let's."

The news that the boy-who-lived-and-then-didn't lived _again_ had not yet exploded on the public place: _The Quibbler_ had apparently gotten _some_ information, but even Lovegood's article was written in the conditional tense, and few would take it seriously; _the Daily Prophet_ hadn't given any credit to whatever whispers it had heard. Yet.

Some heads had turned around them when they had walked to the bank, but it could still have been attributed to the rarity that was an adult in full muggle attire, looking like they had never encountered anything magical whatsoever. Minerva had offered to give Harry a disguise, but he had eventually opted to "rip the band-aid off", as he put it: if the public opinion knocking at the door was unavoidable – and she was pretty certain it was – then he thought it better to just give them what they wanted and let them move on to something else sooner rather than later.

22 years _was_ a long time, and not everyone would recognize a baby who had been hailed as messiah for all of 24 hours... Which is why she hadn't expected to run into a mob as soon as they exited Gringotts. Her surprise didn't assuage when she saw _Mr. Malfoy_ , of all people, leading it. As a politician in the making, Draco was sometimes sent to do his father's bidding which often involved riling people up using shady rhetoric. Their anti-muggle political movement had _some_ power in the Ministry but didn't enjoy a lot of popular support, which had a way of undermining their policymaking abilities.

So Draco, being perfectly capable of _appearing_ charismatic when speaking to a crowd, had made a habit of setting up political meetings... This time, he had opted for a commando tactic: rallying a few supporters and tipping off journalists before coming in person to publicly antagonise the two moderately high profile muggle-borns who had eluded detection, and been found in such a spectacular fashion... Minerva cursed herself mentally for not even considering that it was a possibility.

"So!" Draco began his indictment with a booming, probably magically amplified voice. "These are the culprits, then! Why am I not surprised to see that their wrists are cuff-free?"

A few obnoxious laughs coursed through the small crowd. Hermione started to form a confused interrogation, but Minerva stopped her from voicing it. She whispered in their ear that anything they could say would probably make matters worse. It was going to be painful, but there was no other alternative than to keep one's head held high and respectfully silent in the face of grandiloquent racism.

" _This_! This is who our Ministry is spending our money on, when what it ought to _fight for_ is _Justice,_ and the _protection of the people_! Protection from those who endanger our way of life! Justice against those who, unencumbered by the weight of _our_ history, act so brazenly that _we_ have to pay, use _our_ public funds, to repair _their_ damage! Protection from those whose allegiance isn't determined, who don't understand that _secrecy_ is not just a quaint tradition, but a defence against barbarity! A wall between us and the hordes of illiberal muggles who, given the first chance, would _eradicate the whole magical society_!"

He wouldn't have believed that mere muggles could do that of course, but he wanted the audience to. And said audience was currently cheering.

"And that _is_ the problem with muggle-borns, isn't it? Who's to say where they stand in the everlasting conflict between those who know magic and those who can't understand it – those who _destroy_ all that they can't understand? Because make no mistake: it _is_ a conflict! We are not _hiding_ from the muggles because we _like it_!

"Who's to say that those two muggle-borns wouldn't side with their _parents and family_ if the muggles started to hunt wizards again? When we are paying for their shelter, food, and the best education in the ways of magic, aren't we buying them the very weapons that they'll turn against our culture at the first opportunity?"

The crowd shouted its angry approval. Hermione looked like she was going to be sick.

"And these two already have proven their _indifference_ for the very foundations of our culture, and their disinclination to integrate in wizarding society: the _very first thing_ they have done upon learning about magic was to conjure a very visible _fire tornado_ in the heart of London! In broad daylight! It is a crime! They are adults! But our lenient Wizengamot won't even _try them for it_! 'They didn't know', they said... Of _course_ they didn't, but as their own frontispiece says, it's no excuse! On the contrary, it's a _grave danger!_

"These two are _prime examples_ as to why it is so _important_ that we see the muggle-borns for what they _are_ : a privileged class who can ignore the law, a danger to our culture, and thus a danger to our very lives! What do you have to say for yourselves, criminals?"

Hermione visibly fought very hard not to respond. There was a white glow in her eyes and the curls in her hair were inflated with fury, but she knew that she lacked both information and preparation to fight this battle. Harry was focused on discreetly hiding his most obvious attributes, turning his scar-free profile to the cameras. He had also closed his eyes and was breathing slowly and deeply, probably trying to contain his shock and anger before it materialised in any way. Good.

Minerva spoke in as much of a matter-of-fact tone as she could muster, addressing the crowd and the journalists with a slightly stronger amplification, speaking quickly to prevent Draco from interrupting:

"The Statute of Secrecy shelters from indictment those whose ignorance of the law stems from the law itself; a trial against these wizards would constitute wrongful prosecution, and Mr. Malfoy's own ignorance of our legal system is probably the most worrying fact he has demonstrated today. There will be no further comment."

She took the other two by the hand and they disappeared, putting an abrupt end to the sound of the audience's shouts and to Mr. Malfoy's smug smile.


End file.
